I wrote a new article! This one uses Yeats as a framing device, which also allowed me to use the line "The best are exhausted and isolated, while the worst are creating yet another vibe-coded pile of crap."

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/slouching-to-bethlehem

You know, it'd be easier to deal with rejection had we not engineered our societies to increase the amount of it we're exposed to by several order of magnitude, and them made the consequences of rejection severe enough to be intolerable

Like, I cannot stress this enough: I have somehow developed the exact skills needed to alienate the powerful and make myself unemployable. And I can't even sell bootleg blue jeans to support myself.

You know, I think sometimes being able to write well is the most backhanded of talents that you can have. You get all of the problems of being highly talented with very few of the benefits

RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uwm4up6ndq4o45nx3vwy3wvj/post/3mye6s5wxuk2i

Oh, fuck the hell yes. Suck it, Bridges

It is quite possible to create a heavily biased media environment by reporting accurately, but selectively. Lying on the part of the media is actually largely unnecessary, at least for the kind of propaganda that the anglosphere prefers

RE: https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/01a1423c-a562-7373-8569-b6a0cec24653

The theory is sound, but in practice this means that I have to call using Twisted (among a whole lot of open-source projects) Oomfware, and that seems awkward for everyone involved

Just presented at our local Python meetup! I talked about Python's GIS tooling. Think it went well

I have to admit, the sheer level of compartmentalisation between writer-Iris and businesswoman-Iris that I have to maintain very much wears me out sometimes.

There's something perverse about the fact that the people whom we give the biggest platform when it comes to discussion of crisis and collapse are the ones that have really not had very much experience of it and that talk in weirdly woolly ways that are almost delusional. The writing that we see coming out of it gives the impression of hardheadedness while being the opposite.

Considering that *getting a publishing deal these days* requires an awful lot of privilege, perhaps this is unavoidable.

RE: https://toots.matapacos.dog/@porkroll/117436839131955984

Russia *very much* engages in bot farming and hybrid warfare, and I don't like how much the "we have no evidence that the recent datacenter strikes have led to a decrease in bot traffic" is turning into "Russian hybrid warfare has no effect or isn't a thing", which is transparently and obviously stupid.

Two things can be true.

Sean Goedecke has just written a deeply smug and condescending hit-piece on me, and I'm honestly about to boil over

New article! This one's about the "AI is inevitable" line, and what on earth it means for a technology to be "inevitable" in the first place:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/llms-arent-inevitable

Is this how normal people feel all the time?

I cannot help but feel that mental health language has eaten a whole lot of discussion of questions that should by right be political

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gdinwiddie/117401466570406109

Addition: this will likely start in Upstate New York or somewhere like that. The moment it starts happening, start shouting about it on social media through all the channels you can. Even if there's some minor damage on the East Coast, you can easily make it back by mobilising much of the rest of the country

I did an actual marketing thing! @piffio, a highly experienced CTO and generally very intelligent person has very kindly let me write a guest post on his newsletter, both because I am a capable writer and because it will help build awareness of the existence of Arca:

https://makemeacto.cc/the-liberal-arts-of-tech/

Sergio writes well and is very clever, and you should all go follow him on the Fediverse and sign up to his newsletter.

Thinking a little about my undergraduate years, when I spent so much time in argument with creationists. It feels awfully quaint now, and honestly as though a lot of the people I was arguing with have been left behind by the tides of Trumpism just as much as I have. I don't quite know what to make of that.

I've written a new article: this one started off when I read @pluralistic's excellent book Enshittification, and it's my attempt at an analysis of what enshittification looks like from the inside out. Why do people enshittify? What set of beliefs and mentalities make people able and willing to enshittify? And why has the outcry over it been comparatively muted?

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/poor-enshittified-souls

I will gently point out to people that "voting for the lesser evil" breaks down in situations where both sides explicitly want to drive trans people out of public life. You have no moral claim on our vote, however much other people would benefit from one side winning over another, when both sides just flat want us *gone*.

So... I'd suggest that if you're in that situation, you make sure that candidates on your side don't push transphobic positions.